Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Our School System Fails Where Lives Are at Stake

TheBody.com

Our School System Fails Where Lives Are at Stake

By Tracie M. Gardner and Kymsha Henry

November 30, 2010

For our World AIDS Day 2010 section, we wanted to capture the diversity of
the AIDS community. So, we reached out to people across the world -- mostly
those who have never written for us before -- and asked them to guest blog.
These columns are written by people who are living with HIV, have been affected
by HIV, or work in the field.

Tracie M. Gardner

Kymsha Henry

New York City's embattled school system is no strange topic for the enraged
among us: What a new chancellor means, how mayoral control has played out,
whether test scores show failure or progress -- the talk never ends. But what
the education community isn't talking about is the blatant public health failure
happening in our schools every day.

We are talking about HIV -- specifically, the mandate for schools to teach
our children about it as part of their health education. Twenty-three years
after advocates and health officials won the hard-fought addition of an HIV/AIDS
curriculum in New York schools, the quality -- or even existence -- of sex and
HIV education is debatable, at best. That means that in a city whose rate of HIV
infection is three times that of the rest of the nation, our kids still don't
get the importance of safer sex.
As it is, school-age students are bombarded with misinformation and myths
about sexual health and sexually transmitted infections from peers. Now, with
the advent of the "reality show," they are also learning about sex from
misinformed D-list celebrities. Case in point: the admission from Pauly D and
Mike "The Situation" Sorentino of MTV's Jersey Shore that when they have sex in
the hot tub they do not use a condom, because "hot water kills all the sperm."
Members of the Young Women of Color HIV/AIDS Coalition encounter this type of
nonsense constantly as they try to educate our youth on making healthy
choices.

And Dr. Alwyn Cohall, Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, College of
Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University -- as well as Director of Project
STAY (Services To Assist Youth) and a consulting physician with the Young Men's
Clinic (YMC) -- is hearing another particularly toxic piece of "wisdom"
circulating among the young people he sees: If the ear wax of a female sex
partner is inserted into her vagina and she shudders, she has an STD.

Messages like these are dangerous and irresponsible, and their effect is more
than anecdotal. More than half of the city's high schoolers are having sex,
according to a Health Department report in 2007. Now, the newly released
National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior shows us that only 58% of girls
14-17 used a condom the last time they had sex. In 2008 alone, there were 1,186
new HIV diagnoses among New Yorkers age 13-29. Wouldn't it be great if schools
actually provided the solid sexual health education -- including the mandated
HIV/AIDS curriculum -- that exists precisely to combat the myths and help reduce
the number of new infections among this age group?

We already have this population in our schools every day. Instead of using
this opportunity to reach kids early with the message of prevention, we're
letting the rumor mill put their lives in danger. Why? Because addressing the
problem means talking about sex. For too long, discomfort on this front has been
a stumbling block in the fight against HIV. Infection from intravenous drug use
and from mother to child has plummeted, and yet the simplest solution to sexual
transmission makes us squirm. Education officials need to face the reality --
adolescents are having sex -- and do what's right, and what the law requires:
Teach our children these facts. Give them the tools to make healthy choices.
Turn HIV transmission around before
it needlessly lays claim to another generation.